


I'll Tell My Sorrows to the Stars

by orphan_account



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: M/M, Past Relationship(s), Unrequited Love, Unresolved Romantic Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:03:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3848557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes devotion isn't enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Tell My Sorrows to the Stars

Were one to ask the medic how long he had loved Optimus Prime, one would be met with a derisive chuckle, an offended huff, or some combination of the two punctuated by a roll of tired optics. Then Ratchet would lecture you on the dangers of falling in love, and he should know, he would say. He had been in love once, only to have what he loved taken away from him in a most violent and terrible manner, and since feeling his spark being ripped apart and stomped under cruel Primus’s big, heavy foot, he swore to himself that he would not fall in love again.

And so he succeeded. For many, many stellar cycles he never felt his spark flutter as it used to when his mate had looked at him.

He devoted his entire spark and soul to the Autobot cause, seeking to fill that aching hole in his life force that was left when his sparkmate had passed into the Well, seeking something to occupy himself with for his remaining solar cycles until he offlined. Whether it might be in battle, or old age after living his life without a mate, he didn’t know nor did he really care. All he cared was that he might be reunited with his beloved one day.

That was his mantra for a long period of the war. Work and keep oneself busy until the end of your time, and you will be rewarded.

Slowly he forgot that mantra. Slowly he stopped thinking of him every klik of every solar cycle. The instances decreased from once every few kliks, to once every cycle, to once every solar cycle.

Then that aching hole in his spark slowly healed and began to refill. They had traveled so long, so far from their home, that he reasoned that the warm feelings he felt simmering in his spark for Optimus were simply arising due to their proximity to each other. There weren’t many other Autobots left. Optimus had appointed him his personal medic.

Of course, he reasoned, he would feel elated and happy when Optimus was simply in the same general area as he was.

“Prime!”

Ratchet quickly lifted his helm and glanced in the direction that the now-familiar voice called out from. He looked at the console with its large screens and straightened his spinal struts, ceasing his cleaning of an instrument he had used earlier in the day. “What is it, Agent Fowler?”

“Where is Prime?” The human liason’s voice was irritated. That was nothing new.

Ratchet frowned slightly and shifted on his pedes, the antennae on his backpack compartment swaying with the motion as he put all his weight on one leg. “He is readying for recharge. I have the night shift tonight.”

“Pass him this message, will you? We’ve got reports of Decepticon activity nearing closer to the abandoned remains of Chernobyl. I don’t know what they’re doing there but he needs to investigate-”

At the word “Decepticon” Ratchet’s audios were rapt at attention, and he was ready to rouse the other bots out of sleep and tell them to march their afts out. “Are they there now?”

“No. Local reports mention only seeing the Decepticons active during the early morning hours. For some reason they think it best to be active during those hours and not at night, when no one will see them.”

“I will pass him the message.”

“Tell him to get into gear in the morning and investigate it. Fowler out.”

The human’s face disappeared from the screen, leaving Ratchet alone again. Sighing and resuming his cleaning, he let his thoughts wander to the Prime.

It seemed to be a very normal thing now.

He imagined what it might be like, being with the Prime romantically.

No.

Briefly he thought of his deceased mate. How much he missed him and wanted to reunite with that ridiculous slaghead. He thought of him and how he used to gather him in his strong arms and dip him to the ground, dance with him, lean down and kiss him fully on the mouth.

He thought of Optimus Prime and how those lips might feel on his.

No.

Ratchet finished wiping down that tool he’d used to look at the components of a piece of rusted metal that the children had brought him and stored it away in his medical kit. Making a note to clean it when he came back, he dumped the cloth in a bin nearby his workstation.

He remembered feeling bits of trepidation the first few times he talked to Optimus.

And he remembered feeling scared the first few times he had to walk over to Optimus’s quarters and knock on the doors.

Optimus was always a gracious mech. He could have been in the middle of a recharge cycle after a terrible day and he would still be courteous to whomever came and knocked on the doors to his quarters in the middle of the night.

Before he knocked, Ratchet thought it would be better to reach the Prime by communication link.

::Optimus? Are you awake?::

Ratchet heard a few kliks of silence. There was a soft rustling on the other end, a small and tired noise reaching his audios over the link, before that voice that always made his spark skip a pulse entered his auditory circuits. ::I am now awake, Ratchet. Do you need something?::

::Agent Fowler contacted me.::

::What did he require?::

::He relayed reports of Decepticon activity near a place called Chernobyl. It’s a former nuclear power plant in the Ukraine that-::

::That suffered a catastrophic nuclear accident that has rendered the immediate area uninhabitable for the next twenty thousand human years. I have heard of it. Are the Decepticons active at this hour?::

::He said they’re only active in the early morning hours.::

::Then the rest of the team and I will have to investigate in the morning. Thank you Ratchet.::

::Optimus…:: The Prime’s name slipped out of his mouth before he could hold it back. He would come to regret this, he was sure.

::Yes Ratchet?::

He had begun to open this up. There was no going back. The medic prayed to Primus that this might work in his favor before he continued ::Optimus, may I please have a word with you?::

No answer came his way for a few kliks that stretched into decacycles. He was left standing outside the Prime’s quarters, biting down on his bottom lipplate. This was a mistake. He had made a terrible mistake.

There came the sound of the doors sliding open. Ratchet had begun to turn his frame around to walk away from Optimus’s quarters but at the sound of the doors opening he turned back and saw Optimus standing before him in the doorway. Those kindly blue optics, though tired, looked questioningly at him.

“Is there something wrong, Ratchet?”

Yes.

“No. Nothing is wrong. I merely need to… talk to you.” The way the medic said those last three words embarrassed him. His tone of voice had dropped down to a whisper and he had trailed off after the “y” in “you.”

“What is it that you need to talk to me about, Ratchet?”

I love you.

Ratchet thought of his deceased mate and how he was the only other mech he had ever dared say those words to. It was a dangerous thing, to give yourself so fully to one other being, as he had learned when his spark was torn apart in agony after the only one he had ever loved was ripped away so brutally from him.

He had sworn he would never feel the need, the urge, to say those three words again.

“Optimus, I love you.”

He had been around Optimus for long enough that he felt that he could properly read the other mech’s emotions. However, Optimus kept a fairly neutral expression on his faceplates. There was a distinctive lack of an electromagnetic field that he could read to try and discern what reaction his confession had just elicited.

Ratchet would much rather have seen anger on the Prime’s faceplates. The unreadable expression struck a glimmer of fear into his spark, and it swallowed his life force whole.

Optimus closed his optics, then reopened them and the medic saw his elegantly crafted helm tilt a minute distance to the side in a gesture of inquisitiveness. The mask of neutrality slipped a brief moment, long enough for the Prime’s mouth to form the words and his vocalizer to say “You love me.”

Those three words, rephrased and repeated back at him, were the crack that broke the dam that had been holding back the medic’s true emotions for eons. The water gushed forth, spilling over, as he spilled his own sentiments onto the mech before him. “I love you. I love how you make my spark skip a beat when I see you walk into the same room as me, when I see you in the leadership position you were born to fulfill, when you are gentle with your soldiers and how you compose and conduct yourself.” Ratchet stopped a klik, shut his optics, and continued, “You make me want to spend the rest of my life cycle with you, Optimus. Everything you are, everything about you. I love you how I...”

I love you how I loved him.

The dam had been slowly chipping away for many stellar cycles. It had worn down, and now it was gone.

Optimus said nothing nor did he try and prompt the medic to continue the sentence. That unreadable expression was on his face again, and he had straightened his posture. The Prime blinked and heaved a sigh so heavy that one would think he had just shouldered the weight of the universe on his shoulder struts, that he was catching his breath to continue bearing that weight.

“Optimus?” Ratchet dared ask after a nanoklik. His blue optics peered up at the crimson colored mech. Stoic, the leader of the Autobots. The one that always had to make the hard decisions that could mean life or death for all of them. He would gladly follow Optimus into a fire if he could be next to the Prime. “Optimus, can you…” he trailed off for a moment, voice cracking until he composed himself and continued, “can you say something, please?”

Optimus said nothing. He closed his optics again. He couldn’t read his emotions on his faceplates.

Ratchet turned away, wishing he had a serum he could inject into the Prime’s systems to make him forget that this had ever occurred, make the Prime forget that he had just laid his emotions bare on the ground only for his lack of a response to stomp on his spark. A heavy servo on his shoulder stopped him.

He heard the inhalation of Optimus taking a breath.

He turned around.

Sadness in those blue optics that had seen and been through too much.

“I dearly wish you had not told me this, Ratchet.”

Megatron could have come and knocked the wind out his intakes and severely injured him all over again and it would not have hurt his spark as much as Optimus’s words did. Before he could show some restraint Ratchet felt his faceplates heat up and his vocal tone was a bit sharp as he responded, “Why not?”

The Prime moved his servo from the medic’s shoulder. This time Ratchet could read the Prime’s body language. He knew that Optimus wanted to turn away from him but that it was taking all of his willpower to stay standing where he was, to continue looking at him.

“Why not?” he repeated the question.

“That is a very loaded question, Ratchet. I am not sure I should tell you the answer.”

“Optimus, I just laid my emotions in front of you. I told you how I feel.”

“How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long have you loved me?”

Ratchet had to think back on the many eons that he had known the Prime. He hadn’t known Optimus before, when he was a simple data clerk, so he didn’t know Optimus as long as others did. He sighed. “After the Battle of Tyger Pax. After I put Bumblebee back together, mostly, and I saw how much you grieved over him. How much you cared for him and how you were so elated that I could bring him back from the brink of offlining.”

Optimus was quiet again, looking intently at the medic.

“And then you appointed me to be your physician. That is when… they grew. The closer I got to you, the better I felt I knew you, the more I fell in love with you.”

It was Optimus’s turn to heave a heavy breath. Ratchet swore he saw the mech shake his helm, which prompted him to repeat that two word question again. “Why not?”

“I grew to respect you as a medic when I saw how you devoted yourself to the Autobot cause after your sparkmate passed into the Well.” This time Optimus was looking to his side, showing an intense interest in the doorway he stood in and under. “I saw how you were so concerned for Bumblebee and how you raced to fix him, the youngest and best scout of the cause. I saw how you were with your patients. Brash but also very understanding. That was why I appointed you to be my chief medic, despite what I perceived…”

Quiet for a klik.

“Was I that obvious?” Ratchet knew he would regret asking the question the moment it left his mouth.

“I had an inkling of your feelings for me for the longest time. I brushed them aside, however, as I concerned myself with matters of a much more pressing nature. But the more we kept contact with each other, the more we were around each other… I knew.” Optimus nodded once and then turned back to look at the medic, optics softening and dimming. “I knew. And this only confirmed it.”

Ratchet wanted to lie on the floor and for the floor to make him disappear so he would never have to look Optimus in the faceplates again.

“To more properly answer your question, Ratchet. I wish you had not told me because I feel that this revelation will ruin the respect and friendship we have with each other.”

Never had Ratchet wanted to eat his own words.

“I have seen you only as a dear and great friend in the many stellar cycles that we have known each other. With this revelation that you have felt much more for me… I am not sure how to continue.”

“How to continue what, Optimus?”

“How to continue our friendship. How to continue speaking to you.”

“No, it’s fine.” Ratchet raised his servos in defeat and sighed. “I spoke out of line. I’m sorry.”

The medic turned around and walked away, holding back the streams of frustrated, hurt, and angry fluids that fought for their right to fall from his optics. He reached only a few steps before the Prime’s voice called out to him. “Ratchet.”

He didn’t turn his entire frame back around. He only turned his helm to face the wall to his left, one optic looking over his shoulder at the crimson and deep blue mech standing in the doorway.

Optimus looked at him with an expression of sorrow. “I could not pursue a relationship with you in the event that I held the same sentiments as you do for me. I cannot in good faith pursue a relationship with anyone, especially any of my subordinates. My position as Prime cannot, and does not, allow me any freedom for romantic entanglements. I would also trust that you would react in much the same manner had I come to you with these romantic notions.”

“Even if I did, Optimus,” Ratchet’s tone of voice was terse though he mulled over the Prime’s words in his processor, “there is the fact that I just told you that I love you.”

“Why do you love me?”

“I-I just,” Ratchet curled his digits into his palm and wanted to bang them on the wall in a fit of frustration, Primus the mech was dense, “I just told you, Optimus. You make my spark sing. You are the epitome of Primus. My spark flutters at the thought of you. I imagine how it must be to be you and how it would be to be with you.”

“You imagine, Ratchet. But you do not know what it would be like to… to be with me, as you said.”

“I imagine, yes, because I do not know.”

“You can imagine. But what you imagine and what reality is actually like are often two very different things.”

Both mechs stayed where they stood, Ratchet’s back facing Optimus and the Prime looking away from the medic and where he stood. The silence was deafening, so permeating, and the tension was made of a thickness that Ratchet doubted even his sharpest tools might be able to cut through.

He could hear Optimus’s spark thrumming from where he was. He wondered if the Prime was able to hear his.

“I feel,” Optimus began, drawing air into his intakes before he slowly exvented it. He looked back at the mostly-white hued mech. “I feel by your use of “I imagine” in your terms of referring to me, that you have created this image of what I must be like, Ratchet. You have created something of me that I might not be, and you have fallen in love with the image you created. As I said,” he stopped and looked at the floor, “imagination and reality are often different things.”

Ratchet turned around, faceplates hard at the accusation even as his spark sank with a realization of truth. “You know, Optimus, I would rather like to figure that out myself.”

The Prime took a few steps forward but still made certain to keep a small distance from the medic. Both Prime and medic looked at each other across the corridor.

Ratchet pushed back the image of Optimus nodding in assent.

Optimus shook his helm, faceplates drawn together in an expression of sorrow. “I cannot give you that opportunity, Ratchet.”

Silence. It was thick and deafening, again.  

“I loved someone once, Ratchet. I loved him very deeply. He and I… we swore that we would move the stars in the night sky for each other.” Optimus’s expression of sadness (though Ratchet interpreted it as pity) changed to one of stone when he looked up at the medic again.

“You and Megatron.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a factual statement.

Optimus nodded once.

“But why?”

“Because the love we felt for each other was equally matched, once, so long ago.”

“You would…” Ratchet scoffed and sputtered a moment. “You would go and get romantically entangled with our worst enemy, Optimus. In the middle of this war.”

Optimus rounded on Ratchet, optics blazing. “And when did I hint at such a thing?”

“You just said you love him.”

“I did. I loved what he once was, what he used to be. But now, I hate him, Ratchet.” Optimus sighed. “Once I used to scoff at the idea that you could at the same time hate and love another. I thought in binaries. I loved Megatronus. I never thought I would hate him, until he became Megatron. But now I love and I loathe him. Just because I love what Megatron used to be does not mean that I am about to go seeking a moment of intimacy from him.”

“But you’re still in love with him. The monster that destroyed our world, Optimus. The monster that caused the death of millions.”

“Which I am aware of,” Optimus replied tersely. “If I were not aware, do you think I would have taken up the Matrix, led our race off planet, or currently be fighting for us to return back to our home?”

“You love him!”

That last statement echoed in the corridor and in the rest of the base. Both Optimus Prime and Ratchet cast wary glances at the doors leading to the other rooms, worried that they might have woken up the rest of the team. There was no stirring and no sound of opening doors, however.

“I love what he used to be, Ratchet. And I still love him, if only because when I see him I am reminded of what we used to have.” Optimus’s tone was resigned, optics dimmed in sorrow. “I still hope that he might be saved. I do not excuse all the evil he has done. I can not, and will not, excuse his actions simply because I love him. I… I don’t know how much more I can say on this subject.”

Ratchet had had enough.

He walked away from Optimus and returned to his post at the console, optics dully watching the blips on the radar and the moving lines that showed that all five Autobots in the base were online. Placing his servo over his spark, he looked down at the console and let out a soft noise of distress, shaking his helm.

When he reopened his optics he saw a droplet of fluid on the console keys.

.-.-.

The base’s ceiling had never seemed more interesting than it did at that moment.

Optimus lay in his berth, stretched out on his back and servos folded over his chassis. His spark thrummed and pulsed under his joined servos.

He heard a noise and lifted his helm briefly, looking at the entrance to his quarters to ensure that no one was outside his door and trying to get in. Nothing was there, however, and he rested his helm on the berth again. It was likely one of those animals he’d heard the children call a “rat”.

He thought of Ratchet.

The medic had been one of his dearest friends for nearly the entirety of this war. He had convinced himself that his processor was playing tricks on him, that Ratchet standing next to him at every possible moment, looking after him far more than medically necessary, was just part of the medic’s personality thanks to his mate having passed on. And Ratchet had mentioned many other times that they could not lose him, the Prime.

Now that he knew that Ratchet viewed him as such… he felt almost betrayed.

Sometimes one could not help how they feel. Ratchet could not help his sentiments, as neither could he.

Optimus closed his optics and thought of Megatron.

Just as Ratchet had lost the love of his life, so had Orion Pax lost Megatronus.

Whispers were thrown around about him fraternizing with the enemy, the leader of the Decepticons. The most he could do was hold his helm high and not let the rumors bother him.

He loved Megatron. Rather, he loved what Megatron once was, before the war ripped them apart. That was one thing he would not deny. He still held to hope that he could turn Megatron to the side of justice and good, but with each battle in each passing stellar cycle that hope grew dimmer and dimmer. The higher the number of those that died at Megatron’s hands grew, the longer this war waged, the more he realized that even his love would have to be set aside so the Decepticon warlord could be brought to full and total justice.

He still loved him. The one mech he had loved before. The only one he would continue to love even should the day come that they smite each other in battle.

They used to lie together, gasping and euphoric in the afterglow of coming together, and they would whisper to each other that they would move the stars for each other, their love was so great.

In a sense, they did move the stars for each other. Moving every star, every world, in their fight to best the other mech. The day would come when they would no longer do such an incredible task for each other.

But until then, Optimus would count the stars, and tell them of his sorrows. To some he would tell of losing his true love. And to others he would tell of losing his best friend.

 


End file.
